Constellations
by Cassiopeia'sFreckles
Summary: Constellations tell stories, of ancient battles and triumphs and love affairs rendered in ancient light. He knows them well, just like all his kind, but now all he wants is to learn the story of a stranger who he hopes won't stay a stranger for long. Link X Male Sheik in a Storyteller/Mercenary AU oneshot that happened by accident.


Hello excellent people, thank you for deciding to give my fic a read, I very much hope you enjoy it. Once again, I honestly cannot thank the people who have read, reviewed and favourited my other stories, you all deserve cake.

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The sun is low, dripping beneath the horizon and letting its colours run across the sky like a watercolour. The temperature falls with the sun, no longer the close heat of midday but something much more bearable. He doubted he'd need a fire tonight for warmth, though that didn't mean he wouldn't need one to keep the night animals at bay. It was certainly time to stop walking today. The rising gloam that was settling over the forest was making it harder and harder to move safely over the rough ground. He could keep going if he had to. He had plenty of practice moving through the night because sometimes, risking a twisted ankle from a stumbling fall was better than waiting to see what might catch him if he stopped moving.

He settled in for the night when he came across a hollow amongst the trees. It didn't take him too longer before he'd set a fire and dragged a log over to use as a makeshift bench. He removed his pack and made sure its precious contents, the only things of his in the entire world, were safe. Then his attention turned to food. He hadn't had the chance to catch anything to eat so made do with strips of dried meat and even drier biscuits. He did have enough water to boil some for tea saving the meal from being completely utilitarian and joyless.

His fingers itched to run themselves over the strings of his most prized possession, his lyre, but he resisted for fear that the sweet noise would attract things he didn't care to meet. He would have to wait until he reached the town he was heading for before he had the chance to play again. He was born from music and stories, he was sure of it, and he had been born from them so that he might share them and their joys and sorrows and beauty. Just like the rest of his people.

They had no homeland, they came from nowhere and everywhere. They barely ever saw one another but they felt the connection to their kind always. His own mother had given birth to him on the road and he'd been travelling ever since. It was the same for all of them. They were nomads. Each and everyone of them walked the land telling stories and singing songs to whomever would listen. Histories, legends, fairytales, he knew them all. Every word, every pause, every hushed silence. He knew the heroes and heroines by name, he knew their triumphs and heartbreaks. He knew the villains and the victims alike. He held them all in his soul and lived their lives once more with every telling.

He fed the fire, choosing to stare into the flames than out into the darkness around him. He wished he could see the stars through the tree canopy above him. So many of the stories that made up his being were mirrored in the constellations. When he was beneath them with no clouds or leaves or roof to obscure their light from him he felt ethereal. Much more part of their world than his own. His mother used to tell him that their people were the children of the stars, he has always and will always believe she was right.

Foliage rustled, he looked away from the flames and towards the sound. Someone stepped into the light of clearing. The man was tall, taller then he was himself. The strangers long hair was pulled back into a loose ponytail. Stray strands fell across his forehead and around his face. His startlingly handsome face. Angular but pleasingly so, with a strong jaw and a thin scar running down one cheek. Quite unlike his own face which was softer, almost feminine. From the look of the stranger this would be the conclusion if one compared any parts of their bodies. He bit his lip, eyes still looking directly into the strangers. It was like looking at the sky.

`May I share your fire?' It was a deep voice, but gentle, seeking to calm and not threaten. He was sure it could be used to threaten though, if the stranger wanted to.

`If you mean no harm then by all means do.' He wanted Sky-eyes closer but years of travelling alone made caution a part of who you were. He moved his things closer to himself to keep them safe as much as to make room.

Sky-eyes moved nearer, setting down his own pack and a long sword with an intricately wrought guard and pommel and its grip wrapped with blue cloth. It was slightly too far away for him to be able to make out the designs on the tooled leather sheath and he wondered if the blade would be as beautiful as the rest of the weapon. He carried his own blades, hidden in the folds of his leather clothes and while he tried not to use them he could do so with cold finesse. He dearly hoped he wouldn't have to use them on Sky-eyes.

`I'm Link.' A hand was held out, he took it. It was calloused and large but there was an odd elegance to the long, thin fingers. Just like the voice earlier he knew that these hands could be gentle or they could wreck worlds. He wanted to know how it would feel if they were gentle to him.

`Sheik' he liked the way Link's lips quirked into smile when he heard Sheik's name. He liked the way their fingers brushed against each other as they let go of the handshake slower than necessary. He liked the way that they'd not stopped looking at each other since Link had come into the hollow.

Link hadn't expected to see light through the trees and couldn't help himself from walking toward it. He hoped it was just another lone traveller like himself and not something more sinister. He could defend himself easily, he was a mercenary after all but he'd rather not fight if he didn't have to. He was hoping for company, just some simple human interaction, something he'd been without for what felt like too long now. He learnt to enjoy being alone but when the solitude began to border on loneliness he found it more than he could cope with. He hated it when the silence stopped being comfortable and started reminding him to things he tried very hard to leave behind.

He'd grown up with barely a moment of silence. His parents worked in the castle, his father as Captain of the Royal Guard and his mother as the castle librarian. He had no siblings but was one of the Princesses playmates. He was glad that the Princess had found climbing trees and catching frogs just as entertaining as playing make believe with dolls. He was glad he's grown up with her. His mother had taught them both during the Princess' lessons. He knew mathematics and geography, he knew about the human body and the great works of literature. Then, when they were old enough, his father had taught them how to ride and to shoot bows and how and when to fight and when to backdown.

He had still been young, still a boy but on the edge of becoming a man, when the soldiers came. He hadn't been unaware that there was fighting on the borders, that land, and villages, and towns and cities were being lost to the war. He had just had that childish confidence that his country would win, because good always wins over evil. It wasn't until the enemy soldiers stormed the city that this faith in the order of the world was shaken. As soon as the city walls were breached he and the Princess were taken by his mother and the Queen and hidden away. The adults tried to pretend it was just another game, they were all to scared to believe it. Link and the Princess were made to promise that they wouldn't come out until someone came to get them and then they were left alone in a dark little place.

They stayed there, as still and as quite as they could be, for what felt like lifetimes. They heard terrible, awful loud noises. They held onto each other so tightly that their fingers hurt and even then they didn't dare let go. It went quite eventually but they kept waiting. They kept waiting, and waiting, and waiting in the dark and the quiet. As the silence persisted they found the courage to whisper to one another. He wanted to leave their hiding place to see what was happening, she wanted to stay, they had promised not to move until someone came for them. She tried to cling onto him, to keep him with her, as he crawled out of the space they were in. He wondered down the castle hallways looking for a familiar face. Everything was marked by the battle, no room or hall was left untouched. He tried very hard not to look at the corpses.

As the man he is now he never would have walked toward the voices, as the boy he was, that's exactly what he did. He just wanted to find out what had happened but, he supposed that when he rounded the corner to see enemy soldiers he did find out what had happened. They took him, bound his hands and threw him in with the crowd of other captives. A few days later they were marched out of the castle and the city and away over the border. That was the last time he saw the Princess, and his parents, and the city and the castle. He never went back, not even as an adult, he's always been scared of what he might find.

After the soldiers took them over the border they were taken to a slave market and sold on in small groups. Link's group was put on a boat and taken over the inland sea to somewhere he thought he'd only ever see on a map. As he grew up he was bought and sold a few times, he worked in kitchens, on building sites and in shipyards until eventually he was sold into the army. It was in the army that he was able to make himself a free man again. He didn't want to be good at war but his body had been made strong by years of labour and he'd learned the lessons his father had taught him well. He saved an important man's life, and the lives of many men who didn't matter to their superiors, and they rewarded him with freedom. The first thing he did, was leave.

He wandered, doing nothing and going nowhere, for as long as he could but there is only so long you can survive with nothing. So, Link did the thing he was best at, he fought other peoples battles and wars. He saved lives and he took lives. He made a name for himself as a hero to some and a horror to others. He has been commended and cursed, adored and abhorred. He has been offered wealth and wives and power, has been begged to stay but always, always declines. He just keeps walking. Until he walked into a hollow in a forrest hoping to find company by the light of a fire.

There was only one person there who looked to be a traveller like himself, so it was unlikely that he'd be attacked but not impossible. He stayed at the edge of the ring of light, making sure to keep his empty hands in plain sight. The person sat by the fire was slender, man or woman he couldn't tell, but the shape of their lithe body hinted that they could be capable of either elegant acrobatics or devastating force depending on how they felt. The face that turned towards him was flawless, beautifully sculpted, framed with pale jaw length hair and set with stunningly red eyes. He watched as they bit their bottom lip and couldn't help but like it.

`May I share your fire?' He tried to speak lightly, scared that he might somehow scare this beautiful creature away. He hoped they said yes, he wanted to be closer to them. He wanted to know what those eyes looked like from inches away not feet.

`If you mean no harm then by all means do.' He let go of a breath he hadn't really noticed he was holding in. He couldn't break his gaze away from theirs, he didn't want to, he was transfixed. They just kept staring even as he moved closer and set his pack down and laid down his sword.

`I'm Link.' He held out a hand, rough and worn from years of work and war. The hand that took his was smoother but still a little calloused. It was delicate, slender just like the body poised between relaxed and ready to flee in front of him. He wondered a little absently what these hands could do. He wondered what they could do to him.

`Sheik' Link couldn't help the quick smile that graced his lips. He knew Sheik was a male name but he cared much less about that than he did about the way their fingers tangled together a little as they broke the handshake. He still wasn't able to look away from those eyes. From this distance he could watch as they went from crimson to ruby to carmine to scarlet in the flicker of the fire light.

`Well Sheik, what brings you here?'

Sheik ran his tongue across his lips before answering, `I'm headed east, to the town. You?'

`The coast for me.'

`Then you've a long way to go still.'

Link smiled again, it was true, he had weeks of walking left and then a boat going north to catch. The Lords of the Northern States were having trouble with raiders from the east and he had to earn a living.

`What takes you into town?' He knew he was pushing his luck, there was no reason for someone he just met to explain their business to him. Still there was no reason not to either.

`The people, it's hard to tell stories when there's no one to listen.'

Sheik let his hand slide off his leg down into the space between them. Link's fingers stretched out to meet his, their fingertips just touching. He wondered if Link knew what he was, what he had meant when he'd mentioned telling stories. He wondered what stories Link himself had to tell and whether he would share them.

`So you are Sheikah then. I've never known anyone else to have those eyes. You know, I first saw one of your kin in an oasis town in the desert to the south. I could have listened for hours.'

Sheik blushed, maybe it was the way Link was looking at him, maybe it was how awed he seemed to be by what Sheik was. He wanted to touch Link, wanted to slide his hand forward and tangle their fingers together. He'd never felt so attracted to someone so immediately but if the stories he carried had taught him anything he knew better than to question it. Sometimes, some people are made for one another, no matter how briefly. Whether this is love at first sight or simply wanting, he felt how he felt and he knew better than to waste this chance.

His mother told him that they were children of the stars and that they were drawn to the people to shone bright. She had said that the bright people were the ones whose stories got spun into constellations. He was sure Link shone brightly, brighter perhaps than anyone he'd ever met. He had to ask, he had to see if Link would share his story, Sheik had to know if could have it and learn it and keep it as part of himself. If he could, then he could hold it close to his soul as it was spun and grew. Such was the nature of the unfinished tales, the ones about people still living who still had great deeds to do. Once a Sheikah had been given one of these stories, and woven it into themselves, placed it into their mind and heart and being they are granted the pleasure of watching as it runs to its close. Link, however, saved him the asking.

`How do you remember so many stories, where do you learnt them all?' Big, blue, curious eyes were staring at him as fingers braver than his own curled around his hand.

`It's less remembering and more bringing out a part of yourself. They aren't things we store away in our minds alone they're things we've lived and felt and shared. I am all my stories and all my stories are me. We learn them from the people they belong to or from those of our kind that have come before us. I learnt my stories from my mother. She gave them to me in the stars and lullabies and the love she had for her son.'

`It's magic isn't it? And they're not ordinary stories are they?'

`There is a magic to it, and no, no they aren't. Would you . . . tell me yours?' Sheik reached his other hand out, while the other tangled itself more into Link's, and cupped Link's cheek `Your lips and tongue can tell it to me and I'll remember it, make it part of me forever,' the pad of his thumb traced Link's lower lip. Link turned his head to press kisses against Sheik palm and fingers. `Or, the places where it lives in you can speak it to me directly.'

`You can have it, you can have me.'

Sheik leant forward, using his hand to tilt Link's chin up and make their lips meet. Link moaned into the kiss and pulled Sheik into his lap. Sheik whined when Link's tongue met his. He slid his hands into Link's hair pulling it free from its tie. Link held him steady with one hand on his hip and the other at his back. They were gentle in the way they held him, and the feeling of them against him kept him grounded even as they began to explore his body. Sheik needed that touch, needed it to remind him where he was and that the man beneath really was there with him. It was too much but he couldn't bear to stop it. The story had taken root in his soul, Link was part of him and he hoped that, maybe, he was becoming part of Link too.

Link wanted more, to touch and be touched more. The taste of Sheik in his mouth was addictive. He barely remembered that he needed to breath as he sought out Sheik's tongue with his own. His hands began to stray down Sheik's back to his arse and from his hip to his thigh. The more that he mapped the body pressed against his with his hands the more he realised it was shaking. He pulled Sheik closer, wrapped his arms around him tighter. He broke the kiss when he felt tears that didn't belong to him falling over his cheeks.

`Don't cry dear heart, I'm here. I'm here.' He lifted his hands to cup the tear-damp face in front of his own. He used his thumbs to wipe away the errant drops.

`You were so young, you lost so much.'

`I know, but I've gained plenty too. I am alive and strong and free and may live as I choose. It's not been a bad life, kitten, I wouldn't have lived any other one.' Link let Sheik settle his head in the crook of his neck and made sure to hold him tight against his body.

`They took your home from you.' Sheik twisted his hands into Link's shirt. He didn't know why, of all the sorrows in all the stories inside him this one broke him so. He wondered if it was because he'd never taken someone's story from them directly before or whether it was because this was Link's story and it filled him so fully and perfectly as if he were made for it and it alone.

`No they didn't, not really, you of all people should know that it's a part of me and always will be. Just like I'm a part of you now,' Sheik nodded against Link's shoulder, and felt the other man take a deep breath before he carried on, `and you're part of me.'

Sheik removed himself from nestling against Link's collar bone and sat upright. His bottom lip founds its way between his teeth again, `Part of. . .you?'

All his life he'd carried other people's stories, other people's lives. He was a vessel for other people's greatness, he had no story of his own. His people were all wanderers, transient and fleeting. Wherever they arrived they always left again. They always had no home, barely ever a family and never a story to call their own. They were blank canvases only filled with colour when they reflected other people. How could he be part of Link when there was nothing of him?

`Yes, you aren't someone I can just forget. I may not be able to hold your life in me like you can mine but you are part of me now, part of my story, if you want to be.'

`I. . . I do.'

Hands tangled in hair again, bodies pressed against each other and lips and tongues were put to a more intimate use than forming words. Fingertips found their way underneath clothes to caress and worship bare skin. They didn't stop when they found themselves naked under the tree canopy. They didn't stop when Link settled himself between Sheik's thighs. They didn't stop when Sheik was sure he could draw his own constellations out of the stars Link was showing him. They only stopped when they found themselves sweaty and spent and irretrievably bound together.

They did the bare minimum of preparations before settling down to sleeping the rest of the night away curled around one another on the forrest floor. Link ran a hand through Sheik's hair, pushing it away from his face. Sheik pressed their mouths together once more, their lips moved against each other slowly in sleepy satisfaction. After a while Link broke away, he kissed Sheik's forehead,

`sleep kitten, we only have until morning.'

Neither of them really wanted to acknowledge that, despite everything that had transpired that night, they would still be walking different routes in the morning. Link had no desire to take Sheik with him just to involve him in a war that didn't really have anything to do with either of them. Sheik knew that he couldn't keep Link from going north, he simply carried other people's stories not interfered with them.

They lay, quiet, in each other's arms waiting for sleep to come. There was nothing left to do now, but to simply be in the same place. To share their air and their warmth until the sun bid them part. Sheik felt Link stir against him a little, and smiled when he spoke,

`in six months be in the northern port, I'll find you there.'

`I will be, my love, I will be.'

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Thanks for sticking with me til the end and helping me make something worthwhile out of procrastinating on uni work. You are superb and I hope you have a wonderful day. Freckles


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